Le mot juste en anglais

Tous à la Bastille

by Julia Frey (julia.frey@aya.yale.edu)

Julia Frey est le pseudonyme de Julia Bloch Nolet, notre invitée spéciale. Ce billet a été écrit tout spécialement pour Le-mot-juste-en-anglais.com. Titulaire d'un doctorat de français de l'université de Yale, Julia est l'auteure de la biographie Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life. Elle partage sa vie entre Paris et la Côte d’Azur. Son blog,  Amuse Bouche, présente aux anglophones un aperçu de la vie en France et de la langue française.

Warning. You can wish someone Joyeux Noël, Joyeuse Saint-Valentin, or Joyeuses Pâques, but you don’t say “Happy Bastille Day”...

Or Bastille Day at all. In France, the national holiday is called la Fête Nationale française (abbreviated Fête Nat. on calendars) or more simply le 14 Juillet. So, I asked Isabelle and Colette, how come English speakers call it Bastille Day and the French DON’T? This apparently innocent question opened up a can of worms (which the French would call “un guêpier”—a hornet’s nest—or “un sac de noeuds”—a bag of knots). My friends had lots of theories on the matter. Although nobody seems to know who first used the expression in English, they both thought a reasonable explanation is that French and non-French alike recognize the taking of the Bastille as the beginning of the French Revolution, and a symbolic victory for “les droits de l’homme” (human rights).

On the other hand, the actual date, July 14, doesn’t mean much, especially when stacked with all the other French fêtes known only by their dates (1er Mai, 8 Mai, 11 Novembre etc.). Which leads me to an aside: the names of months generally are not capitalized in French, but if they refer to a “fête” (holiday), they are capitalized because they’re considered proper names. Fêtes named for saints are feminine even if the saint was male, because it’s “la fête de…,” thus la Saint-Valentin (Valentine’s Day). Most fêtes identified by their dates are laïques (lay, nonreligious), and commemorate solemn historic occasions (battles won, wars ending, etc.), whereas religious holidays usually have real names: Noël (Christmas), Pentecôte (Whitsunday), Pâques (Easter). Even though France is un état laïc (a country with separation of church and state), it’s striking that Noël, Pâques, la Pentecôte, l’Ascension, l’Assomption and la Toussaint (All Saints’ Day) are all national holidays. In fact the French have an amazing number of legal holidays, eleven in all, four of which usually fall in May, which explains why you can never get anything done in May.

Now back to what I was saying... La Fête Nat. is probably called “Bastille Day” in English because “Bastille” is a brief, concise and unambiguous reference to the storming of the prison of the Bastille in Paris on July 14,1789, by 954 men and one woman, armed with pikes and miscellaneous firearms, yelling “Tous à la Bastille !” (Everybody out of the pool).

The actual event was a little disappointing. After a short battle, the nonmilitary governor in charge of the fortress, by then mostly being used as a hospital, simply gave up. When the victors finally made their way down to the “dungeons,” which turned out to be spacious, almost luxurious, they discovered there were only seven prisoners left in the place. The others, including the Bastille’s most famous inmate, the Marquis de Sade, had been transferred somewhere else shortly before. Disappointed, the conquerors dragged an old suit of armor and a printing press out into the courtyard, to be displayed as instruments of torture.

Despite rumors to the contrary, the Bastille was not ripped stone by stone from its foundations by the angry crowd. A contractor named Palloy was hired to dismantle it. Most of the stones were recycled to build a bridge, the Pont de la Concorde. He made money on the side by selling rings set with chips of stone from the walls and patriotic medallions hammered out of the fortress’s iron chains.

So why did the populace attack the Bastille? Because the Bastille symbolized Royal tyranny. Ancien Régime (pre-Revolutionary) France was an absolute, at times despotic, monarchy, ruled en l’occurrence (in the event, i.e. at that time) by Louis XVI . The King could arbitrarily lock up anyone he wanted, whenever he wished, without any stated reason, by simply creating a “lettre de cachet.” These notorious letters were a particularly French phenomenon, thus the term is untranslatable, although cachet in this context means the royal seal. The most infamous lettres de cachet ordered the indefinite imprisonment or exile, without trial, of the individual named therein. The verb describing this behavior? Embastiller (to put into the Bastille), of course.

Even in Paris today, you frequently hear “Tous à la Bastille !” when there’s une manifestation populaire. Careful, warns Isabelle. Do not translate this as “a popular manifestation.” The noun would be “demonstration,” and it’s populaire in the sense of du peuple, i.e., a street protest by left-wing, usually working-class dissidents who feel their constitutional rights have been violated. Recently, this battle cry has been heard in support of “les sans-papiers” (the “without papers,” i.e., illegal immigrants) and at a general strike against attempts to raise the retirement age in France from 60 to 62. U.S. citizens are more grégaires (sheep-like, not gregarious), having accepted the advance from age 65 to the current 67.5 without so much as a murmur.

I was surprised to learn that officially, le 14 Juillet does NOT celebrate the 1789 storming of the Bastille. It commemorates la Fête de la Fédération, organized on the same day in 1790, one year later. That night, Paris, in the presence of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, partied on the Champ de Mars to celebrate the success of a peaceful revolution and the principle of a constitutional monarchy. Bad guess. The revolution continued, ever more violent, until Napoléon Bonaparte became Premier Consul nine years later in 1799. Nonetheless, the Fête de la Fédération was renamed la Fête Nationale française in 1880. Virtually everybody in France will tell you, though, that le 14 Juillet commemorates la prise de la Bastille (the capture of the Bastille). “On nous a bourré le mou avec ça dès l’école primaire,” says Colette. Quoi ? Mou, it turns out, means the lungs of a butchered animal, and the expression bourrer le mou à quelqu’un means to feed someone false information.

In any case, like the rest of us, the French are always happy to have un jour chômé (a day off). Early on the morning of July 14, there’s a défilé militaire (parade), with soldiers marching to La Marseillaise, the French hymne national (national anthem). In Paris, the French Air Force loudly buzzes the Champs Elysées, spewing exhaust smoke tinted bleu-blanc-rouge (the colors of the French as well as the U.S. flag—the “blue, white, red” in France, the “red, white and blue” en Amérique). Before dark thousands of Parisiens arrive at the Champ de Mars in time to picnic on the grass and crane their necks past la Tour Eiffel to look at le feu d’artifice du 14 Juillet—the spectacular fireworks set off from the Trocadéro, across the Seine.

One final warning! The French are amused or shocked or both by the blatant chauvinisme (nationalism) of Americans, by the Stars and Stripes dangling from our houses. As my friends remind me, “on n’est pas si patriotes que ça” (We’re not as patriotic as you Americans). La Fête Nat. is just another vacation day. In short, you can wish someone Joyeux Noël, Joyeuse Saint-Valentin, Joyeuses Pâques, and so on, but you don’t wish people Happy Bastille Day, in either English or French. When it first came into existence in 1880, a few noble families, including that of the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, flatly refused to recognize the holiday. To them, it symbolized the decapitation of some of their favorite relatives. Even today, one or two Royalists are still waiting for the Monarchy to be restored.

La Marseillaise

La Révolution française présentée par la chaîne d’histoire de la télévision américaine.

 The French Revolution History Channel #1

The French Revolution History Channel #2

The French Revolution History Channel #3

The French Revolution History Channel #4

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The French Revolution History Channel #9

The French Revolution History Channel #10
 

Introduction to French poetry

L'article suivant a été écrit par l'écrivain britannique Magdalena Ball spécialement pour Le Mot Juste en Anglais.
 

Introduction to French Poetry:
 CD Edition

 By Stanley Applebaum (Editor)
 Dover Publications
 Paperback: 192 pages, June 1, 1991, ISBN-10: 0486267113, ISBN-13: 978-0486267111

   

 

Poetry is almost impossible to translate.  You may get the gist of the thing, but unless the translator is also a poet (and in that case, you’re getting a different poem to the original), you lose the nuance, the rhythm, the subtle linguistic play.  Reading poetry in any language is an advanced linguistic activity.  It isn’t really for beginner language learners, because of the way it pushes language to its limits, puns, flows, uses double entendre and sophisticated innuendo.  There are so many beautiful poems written in other languages, and it seems a shame to limit ourselves only to those poems that are written in the languages we’re fluent in.  The answer is in dual-language books like Introduction to French Poetry which allow us to still access the meaning in our own language, but experience the rhythm, expression, and beauty of the orignal.  In the case of this one, there’s an accompanying CD with each poem beautifully read by French actor Michel Moinot, who enunciates every word so perfectly that it’s easy to follow along and even begin to fall into the flow of the grammar and syntax.  With the printed poems in both English and French open at the same time as you listen to it in French, it’s almost possible to bridge the language gap and experience the original. 

 

For those learning French, this is an excellent way to increase vocabulary and learn the pronunciation. Moinot’s richly expressed readings will help with fluency and tone, and the overall choice of poets and simplicity of the poems will encourage further reading and a stronger understanding of the history and progression of French poetry.  For those who are interested in the poetry itself, there are 30 tracks, with only one or two poems by each poet.  This kind of survey does show provides a sense of the different types of verse, from the rondeaux of Charles D’orléans, the sonnets of Louise Labé, to the wonderful epistles of Voltaire, the start of romanticism with the bleak fervour of Victor Hugo, the rich imagery of peotic giants Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine and Rimbaud, towards the more modern work of Apollainaire, Éluard, Aragon or Bonnefoy.  It’s a rich and heady mix, diluted only by the fact that there is, at best, only two poems from each poet (some have only one), which is but a mere scratching on the surface of what each of these poets has produced.  If it creates an itch though, as it is sure to do if the reader/listener is able to hear the power and beauty in most of these poems, that can only be a positive thing, as there are plenty of volumes waiting to be explored, many in dual-language form. 

 

The poems are each prefaced with a brief summarised biography of the poet, including a portrait wherever possible.  Compiling this book would have been no easy task, and Applebaum has done a good job of putting each work into context and choosing the most accessible, easy to follow poem, with the least amount of ambiguity. The accompanying CD, is worth the price of the book alone, as it’s only by listening to the work read by an expert speaker where the rhythm and intonation comes out.  What is a surprise, for me at least, is how much humour, playfulness, and lightheartedness there are in even the most intense of poems (and nobody does intense like the French Romantics).  A recurring theme throughout many of the poems (and maybe poetry in general) is the juxtaposition of youth and beauty and mortality, decrepitude and death.  Heavy as the subject is, few of the poems become maudlin, and less so when heard spoken with just a hint of detached irony, and the delicate musicality that is altogether lost in translation.  Listening and reading simultaneously works wonderfully well and gives a complete poetic experience.  Of course, as Applebaum clearly states in his introduction, this is really just the tiniest taste.  Each of the poets represented has a complete oeuvre which is significantly more wonderful than one or two poems can show.  Nevertheless, Introduction to French Poetry provides a lovely and well-structured overview which will help show the relationship between poets – how one historical movement gave rise to another, as well as to provide a beginner’s sense of the many different styles and symbols of the poetic giants who shaped the French poetic landscape.  Introduction to French Poetry is a good way of finding, as Rimbaud puts it in“Départ”, “affection et le bruit neufs!” (new affection and new noise!”).

 

About the reviewer: Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of the poetry book Repulsion Thrust, the novel Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything and four other poetry chapbooks Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and the newly released Imagining the Future. She also runs a radio show, The Compulsive Reader Talks.

 

Livres sur les Etats-Unis – en français

Histoire des États-Unis (Broché)

Jean-Michel Lacroix

 

Toute l'histoire des États-Unis se résume en un va-et-vient entre déclin et progrès, le rêve n'est pas terminé. Malgré ces mouvements de balancier, les Américains ont assez d'énergie pour mener le combat contre ""les forces du déclin"". Ce pays demeure toujours la première puissance mondiale mais le XXIe siècle sera-t-il pour autant américain ? Ce manuel présente cette histoire depuis la premières colonisation anglaise jusqu'à nos jours. Le découpage chronologique adopté dans ce manuel régulièrement remis à jour, permet de présenter les grandes étapes de la formation des États-Unis, de restituer l'importance de la diversité du pays et d'en dégager les continuités ainsi que les contradictions. Un ouvrage indispensable pour connaître l'histoire et comprendre le présent d'un pays qui représente encore la première puissance mondiale.

Biographie de l'auteur

Jean-Michel LACROIX est professeur de civilisation nord-américaine à l'Université Paris III - Sorbonne nouvelle et recteur d'Académie, Directeur général du Centre d'enseignement à distance.

 

Books out of France – in English

 The French Century - An Illustrated History of Modern France

by Brian Moynahan

First English Language Edition – published in Britain in 2007

   

Sixteen chapters cover the history of France from the end of the 19th century to the present day, encapsulating everything from political events and scientific discoveries to cultural achievements and sporting triumphs. The five presidents of France’s fifth republic–Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, François Mitterand, and Jacques Chirac–have led the country through tremendous change in all sectors, and their respective reigns are covered in detail. The Dreyfus Affair, the May 1968 student protests, the onset of a socialist government in 1981, and two world wars are but a few French landmarks that have changed the face of Europe and the world. French culture flourished in the 20th century. Colette, Proust, Emile Zola, and Jules Verne wrote classics in literature while Picasso, Rodin, the Dadaists, and the Surrealists redefined art. Haussmann’s urban plan and I. M. Pei’s pyramid set new standards in architecture. Sarah Bernhard and Josephine Baker revolutionized the performing arts while Camille Saint-Saëns, Claude Debussy, Pablo Casals, and Maurice Ravel set the era to music. The Tour de France, Lacoste tennis, and World Cup soccer energized the sports scene. Innovations in science came from Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, and Henry Bequerel. This book includes two hundred and photographs of the main events and key personalities of the century.                            

Books out of France – in English

Why France? American Historians Reflects on an Enduring Fascination

by Laura Lee Downs & Stephane Gerson

 First English Language Edition – published in Britain in 2006

 

France has long attracted the attention of many of America´s most accomplished historians. The field of French history has been vastly influential in American thought, both within the academy and beyond, regardless of France´s standing among U.S. political and cultural elites. Even though other countries, from Britain to China, may have had a greater impact on American history, none has exerted quite the same hold on the American historical imagination, particularly in the post-1945 era.

To gain a fresh perspective on this passionate relationship, Laura Lee Downs and Stéphane Gerson commissioned a diverse array of historians to write autobiographical essays in which they explore their intellectual, political, and personal engagements with France and its past. In addition to the essays, Why France? includes a lengthy introduction by the editors and an afterword by one of France´s most distinguished historians, Roger Chartier. Taken together, these essays provide a rich and thought-provoking portrait of France, the Franco-American relationship, and a half-century of American intellectual life, viewed through the lens of the best scholarship on France.

The Story of French

by Julie Barlow & Jean-Benoit Nadeau

 

 First English Language Edition – published in the USA  in 2006

 

A fascinating exploration of the historical and cultural development of the French language from the bestselling authors of Sixty Million Frenchmen Can´t Be Wrong.

Imagine a language that is watched over by a group of forty “Immortals,” a language with rules so complex that few people ever completely master it, whose status as the world´s lingua franca has been declining for two centuries, whose use in global institutions is waning and whose speakers are so insecure they pass laws banning the use of other languages and spend millions of tax-payers´ dollars to make sure it gets used in literature, music and film. Now imagine a language that is second only to English for the number of countries where it is spoken officially, surpassing both Spanish or Arabic, a language that is the official tongue of two G-7 countries and three European nations, that is employed alongside English in most international institutions and that is the number-two choice of language students across the planet – a language with two million teachers and 100 million students worldwide, and whose number of speakers has tripled in the last fifty years.

This paradox is the backdrop for The Story of French, in which bilingual Canadian authors Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow unravel the mysteries of a language that has maintained its global influence in spite of the ascendancy of English. Mixing historical analysis with journalistic observation, and drawing on their experiences living in and travelling to French-speaking countries, they explore how the French language developed over the centuries, how it came to be spoken in the Americas, Africa and Asia, and how it has maintained its global appeal.

French humour every which way

Guy Bedos and Coluche, the most outstanding comedians of the 1970s and 80s.

Comedy for a cause

In France, a land of democracy and freedom of expression, political caricature has always had an unusually forceful tone. In the early days it was newspaper cartoons taking a swipe at those in power, then the cabarets of Paris put on stage singers and impressionists for whom the mores of political life were the favourite subject.

With the advent of television, political humour was often the spark that lit the fire. Thierry Le Luron (rather rightwing) and Guy Bedos (openly left) shared the time available to non-conformists in the 1970s. Then came the magnificent invention of puppets, making way for even more ferocious criticism by masking it with the goodnaturedness of soft toys and latex. After the very complacent (and aptly named) "Bébête Show" [bug show], "Les Guignols" (on Canal +) established itself as the most formidable force of opposition of the 1990s. Inspired by the British television show Spitting Image, but considerably more scathing than the original, the authors of Les Guignols were once described as the "best leader writers in France", then bluntly accused of having influenced several elections.

Christophe Conte, journalist on the cultural weekly Les Inrockuptibles

Suite de l'article

Source: France-Diplomatie

Anglicisme: "alternative"

From SOQUIJ, http://soquij.qc.ca/fr/ressources-pour-tous/chroniques-linguistiques

Une alternative, selon Le Petit Robert, est une «situation dans laquelle il n'est que deux partis possibles». Par exemple, un travailleur, en raison de problèmes d'ordre financier, pourrait être dans l'alternative suivante: ou bien essayer de réduire le plus possible ses dépenses, ou bien effectuer des heures supplémentaires pour son employeur.

Sous l'influence de l'anglais, on rencontre souvent des emplois de ce mot tels que: «Il faut trouver des alternatives à ce problème.» Dans ce sens, il faut parler de solutions de remplacement, de solutions de rechange, d'autres possibilités, etc.

"Aide-de-camp"

Ce billet a été rédigé par Jonathan Goldberg

Aide-de-camp is an example of a French term which is used in English in its original French form, without translation. Collins and other French-English dictionaries give “aide-de-camp” as both English and French words.

An aide-de-camp is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state (Wikipedia).

If aide-de-camp were literally translated into English, the result would be "camp assistant". Why is the French term exclusively used in English-speaking countries when “camp assistant” would roll off Anglo-Saxon tongues more easily? One explanation may be that it belongs to the family of French words of diplomacy, a relic of the times when French was the principal language used by diplomats.

Professor Dietrich Kappeler, former director of the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies, describes the history of language use in diplomacy:

"Documents exchanged between countries in the past were written in the single vehicular language then in use in Europe: Latin. In the 18th century French had become the generally accepted diplomatic language, so much so that even diplomatic notes addressed to the British Foreign Office by the Legation of the USA were written in that language. The 20th century saw a gradual emergence of English as a second and later even dominant diplomatic language. At the same time, a growing number of countries insisted on the use of their own language in diplomatic correspondence and joint diplomatic documents."

("Texts in Diplomacy," Language and Diplomacy, Malta: DiploProjects, 2001)

Kappeler goes on to note that at its inception, the United Nations recognized five languages (Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish), to which Arabic was later added by informal agreement.

As French-English translator Céline Graciet pointed out in a piece entitled LANGUAGE AND DIPLOMACY, on her blog www.NakedTranslations.com:

"Nowadays, despite the French language losing much of its prestige, the English diplomatic vocabulary is still haunted by a few French ghosts, here and there: regime, coup, etiquette, rapprochement. I suspect these words are still in use only because they don't have equivalents in English."

Portrait of Alexander Lanskoy, Aide-de-camp to the Empress, 1782, Russia (source: Wikipedia)

« Fooding » ou art culinaire?

   Le fooding est à la mode.
    Il a désormais ses adeptes, ses produits, ses dictionnaires, ses revues, et même ses restaurants.
    Les gourmets d'aujourd'hui ont délaissé la nouvelle cuisine et réinventent les plaisirs de la table. Raffinement et originalité, tout doit concourir au bien-être des convives : saveurs, couleurs, odeurs, décor, atmosphère, environnement sonore. L'art de la table conçu comme un art total.
    Pour ces délicats épicuriens, soucieux du choix des mets, le choix des mots semble au contraire de peu d'intérêt.
    Ce terme sans goût, pseudo-anglicisme formé comme smoking, forcing ou brushing, aurait été créé, selon ses inventeurs, par l'association de food et de feeling (ce qui n'est d'ailleurs pas perceptible dans le mot fooding lui-même…), afin de désigner ce qui est à la fois un comportement et un marché.
    Seul un goût immodéré du paradoxe peut conduire à recourir à une autre langue pour évoquer une forme si typique de notre art de vivre et de notre culture.
    Les mots ne manquent pourtant pas en français : gastronomie, art ou plaisir de la table, bonne chère, bien-manger, art culinaire…
    Dîner aux chandelles ou déjeuner sur l'herbe, repas de famille, en tête-à-tête ou entre amis, au restaurant ou chez soi, qu'elle soit grande, bourgeoise, ou «branchée», la cuisine reste un des arts majeurs pratiqués en France.
    On peut sacrifier au goût du jour, faut-il pour autant en perdre sa langue ?

Source: Commission générale de terminologie et de néologie

 

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